The Best/Worst Mistake

Or with incomplete data

As a marketing and advertising consultant, I'm frequently asked for my opinion on spends by medium, or to put things in a less jargon-intensive way, how a client should best spend their money. (Independent of my fees, of course. That expense is always defensible. Moving on.)

This comes from a good place: the desire to spend every dime as if it were your own is a virtue that I applaud. Marketers and advertisers can and should always look for ways to optimize their spend, because the cash you save can help the business in any number of ways, some of which multiply quite nicely. So I'm in favor of the instinct... but sometimes, very leery of the approach.

The simple fact of the matter is that ad mediums are like tools. You may have one that you like more than others, but if you only ever use one, you probably aren't terribly crafty, or able to complete a number of different projects to optimal conclusions. What's even more telling and basic of a mistake is when a client wants to turn off a medium entirely, usually because they've got data that shows one approach is wildly more effective than others. "(Medium X) just doesn't work for us." Hmm.

The most common target in the current environment? Ad banners in the digital space. Especially when the client has been doing lowest cost work with programmatic approaches, and find themselves disappointed with low click rates. Or even worse, clicks that didn't translate to sales in e-commerce plays, where the client might feel that the traffic was fraudulent.

To be clear about this, banners have issues. Dynamic work with a retargeting component are historically your best bet for higher response, but those can easily get into issues of retraining your audience to abandon shopping carts for a better price. Banners that appear on questionable sites from run-of-network buys don't do much for your brand, and many marketing and ad pros aren't thrilled with bankrolling bad actors like click fraudsters, fake news sites. or dark web tricksters, which is a sizable percentage of digital advertising right now. With all of that in play, it's a hard sell to spend more, not less, on the channel, mostly by switching up to premium sites, and away from remnant inventory.

But here's the not so dirty and not so secret point that old-school marketers always knew, and new-school folks miss because they are being misled by incomplete data... very few consumers come to a purchase decision from a single channel. Even a customer that buys from a clear attribution stream can have that data polluted by offline messaging, or have their decision making impacted by ways that the data never catches. For instance, a reminder email that brings a customer back to the site after a banner got them there in the first place, or a click on a banner after search engine work for the previous visit. Just because a channel took the consumer for the last mile, does not mean that all of the previous miles were worthless.

In a time before digital, marketers knew that a diverse messaging plan was optimal. Consumers would see a television spot, a print media piece, hear a radio mention, and maybe even see a billboard, possibly all in the same buying cycle... and that buying cycle might last years. Since we had no data that claimed to isolate channel effectiveness, a diverse plan was protected, because you didn't "know" what didn't work. Even call center or direct mail data was inherently suspect, and you rarely, if ever, made a decision from a single set of data. (More often, you just used that data to try to negotiate a better price.)

But until we have true multi-channel attribution, possibly from technology that doesn't even exist yet or a consolidation to everyone using and consuming through a single device (best bet: smartphones, and even that seems unlikely for a good long while, given how problematic it is to make some purchases that way), what we have is the worst of both worlds. Uncertainty, with the illusion of certainty.

If you are the kind of person who can't tolerate that level of vagueness in your day to day, or just have a jones to kill channels with certainty in your heart, there is a way out. Pure old-school A/B testing, where you split your audience in separate but equal groups, then expose them to different advertising mixes. The trouble is that it's usually slow, not helpful unless you have enough data to achieve statistical significance (and if that comes back to relatively rare events like sales tracked by digital channel, that can be *really* slow), and still prone to cross-channel pollution, so your significance levels have to be quite high. You also have to have the discipline to leave short-term money on the table, since the less effective method will have to play out. If your managerial situation is more shoot the messenger than learn from deviations from the norm, all of this can be quite uncomfortable, in a social and professional sense.

Or you can do what I usually wind up recommending instead, and to consider the following point.

Think about the best in class advertising players of the age, or even the best players in your space, and ask yourself the following question.

Do they turn off entire channels of communication with consumers?

(Probably not.)

And if they don't, and have you outspent or outgunned in experience and exposure...

What do you know that they don't, and how confident are you in that knowledge?

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Access Versus Experience

Grains of Experience

A very smart business leader said something in a meeting that I was privileged to attend a few months ago, and it stuck with me. His theory is that there is a paradigm shift going on in our world, away from possessions, and towards access. Streaming services for media, instead of cultivated libraries. Transportation companies (well, OK, ride share companies) that don't own cars. Cloud computing instead of concrete servers, selling platforms without inventory, and so on.

Everything through your smartphone that could realistically go through your smartphone, because that device has such an emotional resonance and always-on connection. Information and data that travel with you from place to place and provider to provider, because that's the way to exceptional customer service. Everyone with their own concierge, really. It made a lot of sense to me then, and still does now... but there's a hole in the theory that you can drive a truck through, and part of that is from what I did just before starting to write this column.

Here's what I did.

I got up from where I normally write and went to the back of the room, to a present that my wife got for me for Christmas. It's a possession; even more so, it's a machine. I opened the top of the device, and loaded it with a clearly antiquated and inconvenient technology, taking special care not to damage it, because it can be very easily damaged. Making sure not to do anything else at the time, because I haven't had this tech for so long as to make this second nature, I then placed the device into operation and adjusted to taste.

Every 20 minutes or so, I need to tend to the machine. I can't pause it, or send its output anywhere else. If I let it go untended, the machine will complete its intended task and keep going without reset, and potentially become damaged.

There are no software upgrades for this. It is, simply, a set and finite flaw.

We'll move past the pointless suspense here: it's a turntable. Actually, it's a retro combo turntable, which also plays CDs, cassettes, radio and even your Bluetooth-enabled device, because why not, really. Needless to say, the vast majority of the use has been the turntable.

More surprising is how young the market for the product is. According to MusicWatch, 54% of vinyl customers are 35 and under, and while it's clearly a niche product for the music industry, it's one where the revenue model still makes sense.

I won't get into the sound quality argument, because I can talk to both sides of it, knowing the science as well as the marketing. At a certain point, human discernment is just not generally capable of telling a difference between analog and digital files, mostly at higher sampling rates. I also don't have the best set of ears on the plane, which is actually a help, in that I'm not going to splurge for the over the top sound system and additional speakers that true audiophiles go for.

However, the sound quality argument is besides the point for me. The simple act of tending to the record, avoiding skips and rapid access to favorite tracks, and the sight of that mesmerizing spin -- all of that makes for a potent cocktail of psychoacoustics, or the listening equivalent of a placebo. It sounds better because it feels better, and I'm racking up moments in my growing collection where I just get chills from the record that I wasn't getting from other formats. For me, at least, and for now.

Another consequence of the medium is that I am suddenly willing to experiment on other formats to see if vinyl makes it better. The format in question? Jazz, which as a writer, has never attached very well to me. John Coltrane and Miles Davis are starting to work their magic, though. My guests, in that the turntable made its debut for my home poker game last weekend, were also far more tolerant about what they heard than usual.

Here's another point for analog over digital: there's an exceptional vinyl store that isn't too far from me, which I've started combing for used finds to high success. Rummaging through stacks in this crowded emporium is less convenient than simply shopping online. Amazon carries vinyl, because of course they do. But the sifting and thrill of a strike (Richard Thompson! And more than a few titles!) isn't just a cost savings over shipping. It's the primal aspect of the hunt, the rapid calculation of what I have to have versus what I can live without, and the math involved in keeping my consumerism responsible. All in real time, because the stores isn't open 24/7, and I can't just spend all day here.

Access is important. It scales, it's got exceptional advantages, and even the fussiest mind will take it ninety nine times out of a hundred. Even in music, digital can and should dominate: many of the newer vinyl albums come with a free digital download, and no one's giving up solid state for mobile use. If you want your music with you at the gym or the car, or in settings where you can't keep tending to it, you aren't going back to the old ways.

But access isn't everything, because we aren't entirely (or even very) logical creatures. We close doors and open windows.

And in that window lies opportunity, for any marketing and ad pro wise enough to use it.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Working When Everyone Else Isn't

Ho, Ho, Oh No

When I was in college, far too long ago, there was a Thanksgiving weekend when I didn't have the cash to get home. So I stayed at school for the long weekend, and picked up four straight double-shift days at my work-study hustle job as a security guard. Sixty eight hours billed over four straight days.

I'm not going to mince words; it was terrible, even though the cash saved my holiday season, and I used the time well to catch up on all of my studies, along with an inordinate amount of reading, guitar playing, writing and so on. But there was one side effect that was valuable, in that no Thanksgiving since has been as bad as that. Also, that I was capable of that sort of sacrifice if I had to make it, which gave me a curious sort of pride about my motor, really.

When you work in advertising and marketing, you tend to take your time off at the same time as everyone else -- the week between Christmas and New Years', some time around Labor Day, and if you've got kids, maybe spring break. Which leads to the tendency among many in the field to wrap up the year in mid-December, since most of us have everything all set up well in advance of this time, and finding people who you work with is very hit or miss. Also, you might have a use or lose moment with your time off.

But just because many pros are fortunate enough to have this time, that doesn't mean your audience does -- or that there isn't major hay to make from last-minute adjustments and opportunities, particularly in e-commerce. You also might have contractual obligations to clear business before the end of the calendar year, which means you are doing more than you might want to, given the impact of seasonality on engagement. But if it can't be helped, and you find yourself churning while everyone else is getting their wassail on, a few points to keep in mind.

> Engagement might not be as big of a problem as it used to be. Smartphones make way too many people eternally tethered to their work or (especially) email, which means that the historical drop off might not repeat itself. You might even see a bit of a gain if your competitors close up shop early for the season.

> However, the send might be more harmful than you anticipate. In email marketing, unsubscribes spikes in Q4, because, well, people get too much of it, and take steps to control their intake. True email pros never neglect this metric, of course, but it's easy to disregard it in the face of revenue. Just remember that a spike in unsubs, especially if there isn't a strong corresponding intake of fresh addresses, is a serious problem for long-term growth.

> Don't overpromise. The worst brand moment for an e-commerce company comes when they can't fulfill their promises during the Christmas rush, and marketing and advertising that doesn't take this into account -- or, even worse, actively works to convince the leads that orders will be safely sent when they aren't -- is actively destroying the brand. Most folks in the space know this down cold, but unclear messaging on shipping is just not something many companies can survive, especially in a social media and review site age.

> Cramming rarely saves the season. If you've got a client that needs to change messaging on a daily basis, burns through creative like it's a free resource, and keeps you going 24/7 as if this activity is all that stands between them and a winning year... well, you are in the presence of a terrible managerial situation, and a business that can't survive in the long run. At a brand level, the client is training prospects to buy in low margin. At a business level, the client is keeping you from serving other clients to the best of your ability.

Don't think of it as squeaky wheel gets the grease. More, it's a lack of wheel stopping the entire cart. Oh, and the work's going to stink, too, because this kind of rapid fire force feed creates mistakes, fatigue, and turnover. Push back, if only to save your sanity. (Or get your resume out before everyone else does. That will also save your sanity,)

> Keep your perspective. Even the worst day in Q4 in marketing and advertising is spent (a) indoors, (b) without dealing with hordes of panicky and rude clients, (c) with no greater traffic or commuting problems than usual, and (d) for a salary that would boggle the mind of, say, the poor folks selling Christmas trees or working retail. There are, frankly, many folks in the work force who'd trade gigs with you in a heartbeat. Charity during the season is rarely a mistake.

And if all of that doesn't put a smile on your face, just remember... the holidays will be over soon enough, and then we'll be able to turn the page on a year that many of us consider to be among the worst in recent memory. 2017's got to be better!

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.